Summers and Children:

Children need opportunities to explore activities and experiences that engage their minds, bodies, and emotions in order to help them feel meaningfully connected to the world we share with them.  During the school year, our children’s lives are appropriately organized around the demands of that reality and all other interests and activities must be adjusted.  It is during the summer that children have the psychological and emotional space to expand their world to experiences that otherwise would not be possible.  Summer should not be about relaxation for children—it should be about engagement and exploration... 

GRATIFICATION VS. FRUSTRATION

You are responsible for creating a family that facilitates the meaningful engagement of each of its members into society.  As parents, you will not feel satisfied or successful unless your children can make the transition into school, into meaningful relationships with peers, and into substantive activities in the community.  Therefore, as parents your family needs to adopt attitudes and behaviors that will support success in those arenas.  Notice that your responsibility as parents is not to gratify your children.

Satisfying hunger by eating is an inherently pleasurable experience.  As a couple, you have shared food and drink and it has served to enhance your relationship.  Eating and sleeping define our basic vegetative needs and provide a potential structure and rhythm for people who meaningfully share their lives.  Harnessing the potential of food and meals in your family will allow you to define your core values and share in the everyday joys of those you love.

Helping your child struggle to put a puzzle together, working together on an arts and craft project, helping your child learn how to set the the table, or make his or her bed - these are activities that children need to be taught to do by parents who will use  empathy for their child's frustration to assist so that the child experiences mastery and satisfaction and the parent and child can share a sense of pride and satisfaction.  Empathic frustration is the sensitive push that you give your child to delay gratification in the service of managing their needs and desires so that they learn the basics of impulse control and sustained effort.  Empathic frustration assists your child in building the emotional muscles to withstand the demands that a successful life requires.  Helping children learn how to postpone gratification and accept and even enjoy challenges needs to be introduced and fostered by parents from an early age.

The world changes as you enter parenthood because your perspective must now adjust to the responsibilities of responding to the vulnerable needs of your child.  You are beginning to experience the world through the developmental lens of parenthood.  As you consider your life experience, you can reflect on previous lenses that have shaped your perspectives:  the excitement of playing in the park at age nine, the anxious curiosity of age twelve, the bold adventure of age seventeen.  Our lives are best appreciated when viewed through the specific, normative challenges of the stage we are traversing.  Our needs, desires, frustrations, and challenges are to a large degree determined by these challenges.  It is the unique manner in which we engage those challenges that shapes each of our developmental narratives.  In order to be constructive, parental trainers of our children, we must be conversant with the series of basic, maturational challenges that create frustrations and opportunities for our children.  This chapter will provide you with that essential framework.